John Doyle's Short List

Discovery, 8 p.m. That guy Steve Irwin, who calls himself "the wild man of the animal kingdom," gets a full three hours on Discovery tonight. One of the programs, Steve's Story at 8:30 p.m., is a 90-minute biography of the guy. It's cute and gushing, of course, and if you're a fan of the Crocodile Hunter you'll think it's great. What's truly weird is the first program, Operation Steve. It's a chronicle of the croc hunter's knee operation. "Coming up next, amazing pictures inside Steve's knee!" Seriously, that's what his sidekick says. It's meant to be like an episode of one of those reality medical shows you see all the time on TLC. Although Steve gets an anaesthetic, he's alert during the operation on his knee and chats away with the doctors. We are also given a lot of clips of the various antics that got Steve's knee into trouble. Irwin is a cheerful hoser, charming enough when he's chasing wild beasts and wrestling crocodiles, but what we get here is a giant dose of egotism. Nobody's knee surgery is that interesting. The fact that Irwin was indulged in his wish to make a show about his knee surgery suggests this guy really should get a life.

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WEDNESDAY

A Taste of Shakespeare

Bravo!, 7:30 p.m. As you will have gathered, this issue of Globe Television is being produced during the days immediately after the terrorist attack on the United States. It's impossible for us to know what shows will definitely air this week. However, at any time, a new attempt to put Shakespeare on television is worth drawing to your attention. A Taste of Shakespeare is a series of adaptations meant for schools but the first in the series, King Lear, sounds like a production that should interest anyone who follows Canadian theatre. David Fox plays Lear and the cast also includes Waneta Storms and Michael McManus. The last named usually shows up on TV in the cheesy sci-fi drama Lexx. Lear is one of the great roles of the theatre and Fox seems ideal for it. TV viewers will remember the tall, stern-looking Fox as Clive Pettibone, the widowed schoolteacher on Road To Avonlea. Mostly, Fox performs in Canada's theatres and gave an extraordinary performance as Angus, the elderly bachelor farmer in Michael Healey's multi-award winning play The Drawer Boy. By the way, there's nothing remote about the story and meaning of King Lear - the story of a father with three difficult and troubled daughters is the essential basis for Citizen Baines, a new CBS drama that was scheduled to start this week but will now air when the American networks have restructured their programming. From Lear: "Like flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods. They kill us for their sport."

Largo Winch

CH, 9 p.m. This nonsense is apparently based on a comic book series. Mind you, for a cartoonish spy-type action drama, it is darn hard to understand what the heck is going on. There's this guy Largo (Paolo Seganti) a rambling rover who finds, when his father dies, that he's in charge of some giant corporation. There's a lot of stuff involving fast cars, cute girls and a hodgepodge of espionage and bad banter. All the guys are seriously devoted to their hair.

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